No one would trust their 2016 accounting needs to an abacus, no one would want food-safety standards from 2008 to govern what they’re doing today — so why would anyone settle for fresh or frozen deliveries from a fleet of outdated trucks?

Nickey Gregory knows they wouldn’t and he has put his money where his mouth is to make sure all product delivered by the Nickey Gregory Co. or its transportation affiliate Gregory Family Express is conveyed by top-of-the-line equipment.

Nickey and Cheryl Gregory at their south Florida condo. The Nickey Gregory Co. is headquartered in Atlanta with a second location on the Miami Farmers Market. Photo courtesy of NGCThe Nickey Gregory Co. is an Atlanta-based full-service distributor with a second location in Miami, a dedicated tomato repack operation and its own label, Cheryl’s Best, delivering overnight to 11 Southeastern states. Gregory Family Express is a full-service fresh and frozen hauler that serves the Southeast and Northeast with daily deliveries and came about as a way to ensure the Nickey Gregory Co. could always control its own shipping needs.

Both companies have their own fleet of modern, efficient trucks, outfitted with satellite tracking capabilities and ready to roll on a moment’s notice. Several more brand-new models have recently been added as the lineup keeps expanding.

“We started GFE because a customer of ours would ask us to do emergency runs with frozen food,” said President Nickey Gregory. “The emergency runs became regular runs, then those started conflicting with Nickey Gregory Co. runs. It works because we go can go to a lot of areas — we can go to the Northeast and pick up fruit, or to Philadelphia and get mushrooms and haul them to our Miami location, then bring produce back to Atlanta from there and start the process all over again.”

“If the Nickey Gregory Co. runs short on drivers when we have big days or have to get reloads picked up, we’ll lean on GFE versus hiring an outside carrier,” said Vice President of Marketing and Business Development Andrew Scott. “That guarantees our drivers know and understand produce, unlike outside carriers who may not deal with it regularly. In fact, a lot of the GFE drivers were originally Nickey Gregory Co. drivers.”

GFE specializes in hauling fresh and frozen product along the Eastern Seaboard, with new trucks, electronic log books, satellite tracking and constant cold chain monitoring.

“Technology takes a lot of room for error out of the picture,” Gregory said. “Say a driver is sleeping. If the monitor detects a change in temperature, it will alert the dispatcher, then they can call the driver and say, ‘Look at that unit.’ ”

At the end of the day, GFE “gives us another outlet for transportation that is still owned by us, which lets us keep a tight rein on our trucks and transportation,” Gregory said. “When it comes to shipping, it doesn’t matter whether it’s our product or somebody else’s under contract, we get it there when it supposed to be there the way they want it delivered.”